China continues to pick a fight with the Western powers, this time sanctioning two American religious leaders and a Canadian Member of Parliament in retaliation for western sanctions punishing Chinese government officials for their roles in the genocide against the Muslim Uyghur minority.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday said the sanctions were levied against Gayle Manchin and Tony Perkins, chair and vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and Canadian MP Michael Chong, vice-chair of the House of Common's foreign affairs committee.
China also sanctioned the foreign affairs subcommittee on international human rights. This committee released a report earlier this month that concluded human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in China amount to crimes against humanity and genocide.
USCIRF is a U.S. federal government commission whose role to review the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and make policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress.
The Chinese sanctions prohibit the three officials from entering mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macao. It also bans Chinese citizens and institutions from doing business with the officials and conducting exchanges with the Canadian human rights subcommittee.
"They must stop political manipulation on Xinjiang-related issues, stop interfering in China's internal affairs in any form and refrain from going further down the wrong path," said China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement announcing the sanctions.
"Otherwise, they will get their fingers burnt."
The Biden administration condemned the sanctions, calling them "baseless."
"Beijing's attempts to intimidate and silence those speaking out for human rights and fundamental freedoms only contribute to the growing international scrutiny of the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang," said Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement issued Saturday.
The sanctions retaliate against punitive measures imposed by the Biden administration last Monday on two Chinese officials. Sanctioned were Wang Junzheng, secretary of the Communist Party of China's committee of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau.
The two officials were targeted because of their connection to "arbitrary detention and severe physical abuse, among other serious human rights abuses targeting Uyghurs," said the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which announced the sanctions.
China's new sanctions are the latest in a growing diplomatic dispute against the West over the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Biden administration has kept calling China's oppression of the Uyghurs as genocide.
